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BRISTOL ROVERS... The Gas and the Rovers story.
Gasheads is the name given to Bristol Rovers fans. It was originally coined as a derogatory term by Bristol City ''fans, but was adopted with (a mixed bag of) enthusiasm by the Rovers faithful and now forms part of the distinctive image of the club, along with the blue-and-white quartered shirts. The name stems from the fact that Rovers' old ground, ''Eastville Stadium, was next to a gasworks and the deep smell of the gas often wafted across the pitch during matches. This led to the team becoming known as The Gas and the fans as Gasheads. The full, true story of what lay behind our adoption of the Bristol City fans inspired gas title, by first our young fans and then by our club, has to be one of the most interesting, strange, psychological, football culture stories going and therefore, utterly deserves to be heard properly and to be fully understood by all of our fans of today. The first clue in demonstrating that there is something slighty out of place with the pre-set in stone story, begins with the myth bust, that all Rovers supporters were so overjoyed with the gifted Gas title and that they could hardly wait to get their hands on the treasured, iconic word! The great problem with following that story version is that it totally fails to explain properly why, if all of that was true, had not the earlier Rovers fans followed that same line of thinking at a far much earlier date? Something is clearly out of step here. Why had the Rovers, old guard fans resisted the City inspired term for about 30 years before the term actally began to be adopted into our ranks? Something had clearly happened to us, as a group of supporters which created a sudden mood swing in our thinking and it is in this true, near forgotten story that we will be looking at, here in this article. The story in itself is not all together a bad one and is far, far more interesting then the skipping myth which has endlessly, troubled the minds of many outsiders for years. Their key and never ending question being, why would our club want to promote itself with a derogatory title that had been created by the fans of our nearest rivals? Their question is a fair one too. As far as it can be traced back (based upon the oral traditions of the elder city fans themselves) The Gas, as a term had been invented in the post war years of the late 1940s as a low level, back street, scorn title designed by the young city fans to mockingly point out to, both our supporters and to the general public that the smell of the whole Eastville area, was due not only to the position of the old Eastville gas works, but also by the presence of the Rovers ground next door to it! (From this note you can well understand why Einstein was not a city fan) From the point of view of many of the Rovers fans of the time, this need of the City fans to create such image front for us had come about, simply because the Rovers had a potentally a far better image front then they had and they did'nt like it one bit.(Remember here, these were the views of kids, young fans) The Pirates theme with its powerful link to Bristol's history had some real commercial value in it and if that wild cat concept had ever got out of the bag, in front our own board and had been realized, then the City would have been pushed to breaking point to even get close to matching this themes power. .All the city fans had was the Robins which in truth ment very little to them, to Bristol or anyone else for that matter. However it must be said here, that the Robins did create for us, one very good song which is still heard to this very day. To give the modern reader some sort of real feel for what was really going on here, a translation given by young City fans (Eastenders) in the very late 1960s for the words true meaning, had the gas word down as,The club that stinks! '' What had enhanced that scorn titles verbal power even further, came when it was openly voiced, with the act of pinching their noses while in the presence of Rovers fans. and ''hisssssing '''''out the word....G A S S S S !'' The insult was 100% crystal clear to everybody and remember this all went on, in the streets, in the work places and on the school playgrounds, 24-7, month after month, year after year! Naturally this ugly, little mental disorder or habit, gained them back in return, a colourful, counter punch, scorn title from the young Rovers fans ''(Tote Enders)'' which crowned them back as being the ''S**T''... the words translated meaning in 1969 was, ''S**t fans'', ''s**t club'' with a ''s**t mentality!'' This very hostile mentality between the two sets of fans was very true of those highly volitile, yet very exciting times and went on and on for years to come. ''' (ARTICLE STILL IN PROGRESS) The term, 'The Gas' did not begin to enter into the Rovers terminology book until the tail end of the mid 1970s and the myth and the truth of why our young fans began to adopt the once hated scorn title, have long stood on either sides of the River. With the Rovers move to Bath in 1986 the Gas word was further reinforced by the sight of another gas works just a few miles further up the Bristol Road. At around this period a rash, run away move was made by some Gasheads to try to overthrow the clubs traditional, nickname as the Pirates and replace it the Gas. This idea went one step to far and was understandably rejected by the club. The Pirate nickname was a true creation of our own club from very early times and with its great link to Bristol's history, that made it far to big an object to destroyed in this mindless, over the top way. How would that have looked to the people of Bristol or even to the fans of Bristol City? A sell out on our traditions perhaps. In truth, strongly due to the general 3 to 1 numbers difference in crowds, The city fans were not only able to use the gas term as a blistering scorn title against our fans but also used it as a powerful dis-colouring agent.against our club for years. Faced by these problems and seeing that our club had no answer in how to promote itself against this background of small mindedness, some Rovers fans began to feel that by gaining control of how the word was used, might be in fact the best way to fight back against this ugly background, hence with the adoption of the gas term, we began gain some sort of control over the troublesome word and how it was used in public. This was a pure act of self defence by the fans and it must be said that it worked. Left alone in the hands of the city fans the title was having just far to much power in belittleing the clubs public standing. The adoption of the Gas title at the time, therefore gave us half of the control, in how the title would be used in public and forever reduced its impact as a blistering scorn title. The Gashead crown was taken up by our fans with the I can take it spirit and has been with us ever since. Category:Supporters groups Category:Bristol Rovers